Musical Fidelity M3si Integrated Amplifier - Black

The M3si integrated amplifier makes huge strides from the outgoing M3i model. More inputs, increased power and virtual monobloc power amps with their own separate power supply capacitance add up to a great new product.

The M3si offers a real taste high-end sound quality. Because its power has increased significantly and it now has more than double the capacitance, it gives wide, stable and deep stereo images with a substantial dynamic range. More than that, the M3si offers a sweet musical sound with an effortless, clear, ungrainy quality. Because of the virtual mono power amp configuration with increased capacitance, the bottom end is delivered with punch and excellent speed of attack.

The M3si offers high quality sound with an extensive range of useful inputs in a compact package with reliability and a fair price.

Design and Build

The M3si uses Musical Fidelity's exclusive SMD layout techniques. This reduced the circuit's footprint on the large PCB and gave us greatly increased flexibility with the layout and the ability to add more inputs and, importantly, power amp power supply capacitance. Now there is a pair of big power supply capacitors for each channel. Power is a generous 90 watts per channel.

The new M3si now delivers a healthy 90 watts per channel. Distortion at 1 kHz is very low at 0.007%. Even at 10 kHz it is hovering around 0.01%. Most hi-fi amplifiers have a huge increase of distortion with rising frequency. To Musical Fidelity this shows that the whole circuit design/layout concept is not good enough. The M3si's very low HF distortion proves that the layout circuit and circuit design are operating in perfect harmony so that there is low distortion at HF. We believe this validates the performance and integrity of the whole design.

Signal noise ratio has been improved by more than 3dB. This is a significant step which allows more music to be heard with a greater dynamic range.

Channel separation is excellent.

The MM phono stage is high performance. It has very accurate RIAA equalisation, within 0.5dB from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. The accuracy is maintained out to 50 kHz. Noise ratio is an outstanding 88dB down. Distortion is less than 0.3%. The M3si's phono stage offers potential of great MM performance.

The 24 bit 96 kHz asynchronous USB input uses exactly the same circuitry and technology as our highly regarded V-Links and other top quality computer interfaces. Jitter is virtually eliminated. Noise is incredibly low and distortion virtually non-existent. The M3si's USB input is capable of dredging the finest details from the computer source.

Specifications

Amplifier

Power output: 85 Watts per channel into 8 Ohms

THD(+ noise):

Signal to Noise Ratio: >98dB-weighted

Frequency Response: +00.1dB, 10Hz to 20 kHz

Inputs

4x Line Level RCA / Phono

USB - Type socket up to and inc. 24 bit 96kHz USB audio stream

1x MM Phono input

Phono Input

Sensitivity (nominal): 3mV (suitable for cartridges giving 1.5mV or more including high output MC types)